Sunday, January 18, 2015

Sunday Sew-Day: The Trouble with Tribbles

As you may remember, I have a little thing going with my brother where I make him something nerdy every year for his birthday and for Christmas. This year was no different. After much thought, I decided to make him a tribble. If you're not familiar with the classic episode of the original Star Trek series entitled "The Trouble with Tribbles," then I ask - nay, beg - you to remedy that, lest today's post will hold no humor for you at all. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Fantastic, right? Cheesy sci-fi is the best sci-fi.

So anywho, I went to Joann's and bought three different colors of faux fur - black, brown, and cream. I decided a football shape would be best, so I freehanded a pattern piece on a paper bag and cut out as many pieces as I could from each color. I needed four pattern pieces for each tribble, and I ended up with 16 cream (so 4 tribbles) and 12 each of the black and brown (3 tribbles each). A word of advice: if you ever work with faux fur, I recommend cutting it little snips at a time. If you use your biggest shears and make long chops, you're going to lose a lot of fur length around the edges and also leave bits of fur everywhere, and that crap sticks to everything. Oh, and I also cut up all the scraps so I could use the leftover bits to stuff my tribbles.

I attached two pieces along one side with right sides together, brushing the fur away the seam beforehand. Then I took two pairs and put them together in the same manner. I left a hole, maybe 3 or 4 inches long, for turning the tribble right side out.

Next I stuffed the tribble, first with the fur scraps, then finishing up with some poly-fill. And finally, I hand-stitched the hole closed. The best part? No one's going to see how messy your stitches are through the fur! Now assemble the rest of the tribbles!

And since this is for my brother, I couldn't resist the opportunity to mess with him a little with the packaging. Part of my plan was to pretend I only got him one tribble and it had somehow multiplied in the box. So I found a box that would fit all the tribbles, but just barely. I closed up the top of the box and wrapped it, leaving the bottom open. Then I used a ice pick to punch air holes in the top through the wrapping - you know, so the tribble could breathe.

Once all the tribbles were stuffed in there, I closed and wrapped the bottom of the box. And of course, whenever my brother opened the box on Christmas, I gasped, "Oh my god! I am so sorry. The guy at the pet store told me it was spayed."